Sexy Blake

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction: ‘Bring me my Arrows of desire’: Sexy Blake in the Twenty-First Century

      • Helen P. Bruder, Tristanne Connolly

      Pages 1-18

3. Violence and Dominance

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

      PDF

   2. Subjectivity, Mutuality and Masochism: Ahania in The Book of Ahania and The Four Zoas

      • Lucy Cogan

      Pages 21-34

   3. Visions of the Love Triangle and Adulterous Birth in Blake’s The Four Zoas

      • Ayako Wada

      Pages 35-46

   4. Blood in Blake’s Poetry of Gender Struggle

      • Yoko Ima-Izumi

      Pages 47-63

   5. Ripped from Complacency: Violence and Feminist Moments in Blake

      • Michelle Leigh Gompf

      Pages 65-80

4. Chastity, Redemption and Feminine Desire

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

      PDF

   2. In the ‘Lilly of Havilah’: Sapphism and Chastity in Blake’s Jerusalem

      • Sean David Nelson

      Pages 83-97

   3. ‘Abstinence sows sand all over’: William Lost in Paradise

      • Magnus Ankarsjö

      Pages 99-112

   4. ‘The Sight of All These Things’: Sexual Vision and Obscurity in Blake’s Milton

      • David Shakespeare

      Pages 113-124

   5. Erotic Spirituality in Blake’s Last Judgement

      • Susanne Sklar

      Pages 125-140

   6. Blake’s Bowers of Bliss: The Gitagovinda, The Four Zoas, and Two Illustrations for L’Allegro

      • Kathryn Sullivan Kruger

      Pages 141-158

5. Conceptual Sex, Conceptual Art

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 159-159

      PDF

   2. Hélyos and Ceylèn [A Poison Tree]

      • Tommy Mayberry

      Pages 161-176

   3. The Hinges on the Doors of Marriage: The Body’s Openness to Information in the Art of Stelarc and Blake

      • Paige Morgan

      Pages 177-192

   4. The Sexual Life of Catherine B.: Women Novelists, Blake Scholars and Contemporary Fabulations of Catherine Blake

      • Angus Whitehead, Joel Gwynne

      Pages 193-210

   5. Blake and Porn

      • Philippa Simpson

      Pages 211-218

6. Coda

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 219-219

      PDF

   2. Normalizing Perversity: Blake and Homosexuality in 2013

      • Christopher Z. Hobson

      Pages 221-234

This book lays bare numerous sexy Blakes, arguing for both chastity and pornography, violence and domination as well as desire and redemption, and also journeying in the realms of conceptual sex and conceptual art. Fierce tussles over the body in, and the body of, the poet-artist's work celebrate Blakean attractions and repulsions.

• gender
• poetry
• William Blake
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature

“The editors provide an incisive, polemical introduction to the book’s treatment of sex and gender in Blake’s work and its reception history. … the book remains essential reading for those interested in Blake’s representations of women and gender in his poetry and art. It shows in a definitive way that Blake’s value for sexual theory and practice both in his day and ours depends ultimately on the intellect and outlook that readers bring to his work.” (G. A. Rosso, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 50 (3), Winter, 2016-2017) 

• UK

  Helen P. Bruder

• St. Jerome’s University, Canada

  Tristanne Connolly

Magnus Ankarsjö, University of Buckingham, UK Lucy Cogan, Queen's University Belfast, UK Michelle Leigh Gompf, Concord University, West Virginia, USA Joel Gwynne, National Institute of Education, Singapore Christopher Z. Hobson, State University of New York, USA Yoko Ima-Izumi, University of Tsukuba, Japan Kathryn Sullivan Kruger, Benedictine University, Illinois, USA Tommy Mayberry, University of Waterloo, Canada Paige Morgan, University of Washington, USA Sean David Nelson, University of California, USA David Shakespeare, University of Waterloo, Canada Philippa Simpson, Royal Museums Greenwich, UK Susanne Sklar, Carthage College, Wisconsin, USA Ayako Wada, Tottori University, Japan Angus Whitehead, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore?

Policies and ethics